A dating website for pretty people who do not want to be saddled with old blokes with beer guts has got itself into even more hotwater.

BeautifulPeople.com created a stir when it first appeared because it was exclusively for the use of "beautiful men and women", where members ruthlessly selected and excluded those who did not match their definitions of good looks.However last month the site was hacked and more than 30,000 new members gained admittance when they were not up to the site's standards.

The site has gone on a purge of its database and chucked off the 30,000 who should not have made it. However now it is in the position of having to tell people who previously thought they were beautiful that really they are as ugly as sin. To make up for it, the site has been set up with counsellors on hand to help the distressed rejects from the site and this is costing the outfit more than $100,000.

Greg Hodge, managing director of BeautifulPeople.com said that the outfit had to stick to its founding principles of only accepting beautiful people. However it could not just sweep 30,000 ugly people under the carpet. We guess he means that they also have to be trodden underfoot with sharp stilettos. Hodge reckoned the virus was posted by a disgruntled former employee which meant that that existing members use to rate prospective new entrants, allowed anyone to join.

The site posts applicants' photographs alongside information about their weight and height and ask candidates to describe their "body type" as well as whether they own a car or home along with their zodiac sign. Last year, about 5,000 members were removed from the site after they had appeared to put on weight over Christmas.

This month the site created a stir in Ireland when it said that Irish men were among the ugliest in the world. Apparently it only accepted nine percent of male Irish applicants to the site were accepted. Only 20 per cent of Irish women are accepted, compared with nearly 70 per cent of Swedish women who sign up.

British people are the most likely to be rejected. Hodge is a Brit. Norwegian women and Swedish men have the greatest chance of being accepted into the club, while Brazilian and Danish men are also popular particularly with women from Sweden and Iceland.

Software which was designed to help Iranians escape government control of the web has been withdrawn over fears that it was too easy to hack. Haystack was designed to help people in the country communicate via the web without revealing who they were.

However Haystack's creators have admitted that they had little control over who was using the software and it could be vulnerable to attacks that limited its effectiveness to mask a user's location or identity.

Iindependent computer expert Jacob Appelbaum said on Twitter that it was the "worst piece of software" he had ever investigated and that he was "concerned for the people using it in Iran".